


Sayaka Maizono Backstory Rewrite

by AltoidMint (MintyFresh2Death)



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: Abuse, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Gen, Implied Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, mentioned rape, things get very serious so please heed the warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 18:24:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20394157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MintyFresh2Death/pseuds/AltoidMint
Summary: "So, tell me Maizono-san, why did you choose to become an idol?"





	Sayaka Maizono Backstory Rewrite

**Author's Note:**

> please read the tags and understand what you're walking into  
things get pretty serious in here, I kind of just put her through the wringer on this one

The television turns on. 

Sayaka Maizono sits in a plush chair much too big for her. It's bright red and looks stiff and plastic and uncomfortable. Sayaka smiles anyways, a nice and easy and pleasant smile. She's seated comfortably, but she's holding still in a way that's unnatural if you knew her as a person. She was a woman in perpetual motion. She never sat this still. 

And yet, here she is, sitting ramrod straight on a talk show, not  _ moving _ . 

She's in middle school still. Her face hasn't evened out just yet, and baby fat still clings to her rosy pink cheeks. Her face is always a pale porcelain beauty, and her cheeks are always dusted with a pop of pale pink. She still looks perfect, as always. She had a perfect everything. Young, soft, clean and clear. Rather, she’s presented this way, a meal perfectly plated in a way that makes you terrified to eat it. 

She hasn't yet reached the event horizon. But it lingers just outside where the cameras are rolling. It waits outside the filming warehouse, in an oil slick black limousine. 

"Hello, viewers! Today on our interview portion we have one of the most ambitious and long-standing idols on the scene, Sayaka Maizono!" 

The crowd cheers, as indicated by the sign saying "clap". She smiles and waves. 

"Now, Maizono-san. You've been in several other idol groups before this one. What makes this one different?"

"Well, the one I'm a part of now is way smaller than the ones I've been in before. There are only five of us, and we were all the leaders of our previous groups. Each of us we- Uhm… We worked really hard. To achieve our dreams."

"So, tell me Maizono-san, why did you choose to become an idol?" 

"Well-"

The t.v. goes to static. 

  
  
  


Sayaka doesn't remember her mother. 

She has pictures of a woman in her house. This woman litters the walls and tables and the closets. She sits at the kitchen table, in a little heart-shaped frame, smiling up at the camera flash that makes the pupils of her eyes turn red. Her father tells her with a fond smile and creeping exhaustion that she always had a terrible case of demon eyes every time the camera came on. 

She knows things about her mother. She never knew her as a person, but she does know things. Like how her name was Sadashi, and that her name meant ambition. She had wavy dark blue hair down to her mid-back and she smiled with her teeth. Her eyes were a deep sea-green that just drew people in like a magnet. She liked watching horror movies and had two jobs, both as a waitress. She always looked tired in all her photographs, like a weight was resting on her shoulders that kept pressing. 

Her mother had grown up in some long-forgotten farming village, and the calluses of the hard labor had still lingered on her hands. Friction burn after friction burn building up to the toughest roughest fingers in the world. There was a photograph of her, at some party, clutching a little plastic cup with curled hair and a bubbly grin, holding up a hand to block the flash of the camera as it went off to capture the rare moment. She looked younger, happier, but no less exhausted. Her hands were nimble and strong. 

Her mother had run away from her village as soon as she could, and met her father at a coffee house in some random town on her way towards the city. Her father said that he was playing with his little old jazz band there. He said they’d talked for hours and hours the first time they met, about absolutely everything. They kept going out after that. He says one of their first dates was out to this beachside amusement park. He lets her run her small hands over the glossy colored images, pale imitations of what her mother used to look like. She’s gorgeous, in a pale yellow sundress with a white flower placed carefully in her hair by her date. 

She had a beautiful mind and was planning on going to school to become a private investigator. She wanted to help people. She wanted to find things out and figure out puzzles. The puzzles, her mother had been obsessed with puzzles. Her father still had her old beaten up Rubik's cube in his bedside drawer. She could solve it in seconds, and was always trying to teach him how to do the same thing, kept telling him it was just a pattern that was easy to follow and recreate. He never got it. It sat unsolved and lonely in his bedside table. 

Sayaka had only been one year old when someone murdered her mother.

She remembers sitting down at the table with the heart-shaped frame and memorizing every single detail of the case, years after she was already gone. Reading page after page of distant dead-eyed police reports and official timelines. 

    * 6:30 p.m. It’s a cloudless night, with crisp cold air fitting of a January 3rd kind of day. Victim clocks in for her second job. She took the past two days off to celebrate the New Year with her family, and recover from a wicked hangover.

    * 1:00 a.m. Victim clocks out of work

    * 1:30 a.m. While walking home from a long night shift, the victim is attacked by a man next to an empty lot. There is a struggle, as evidenced by the blood and skin under the victim’s fingernails. Her knuckles are scuffed up, as if she had been punching something. The outcome is the same. He knocks her out with a concrete block and just keeps smashing until her face is unrecognizable.

    * 2:00 a.m. The bastard gets away with it.

    * 7:00 a.m. The victim’s body is found. Her once beautiful face and hair are nothing but pomegranate seeds crushed underfoot. They can only identify the body based on her work uniform and name tag. She has a mustard stain on her shirt. 

    * 7:30 a.m. _The fucking bastard gets away with it._

Her father was devastated. Not only emotionally, but financially. They went from a two-income household to one, in a single night. And now Sayaka has to grow up tossed from friendly neighbor to not-so-friendly neighbor. From low-income housing to lower-income housing. She wasn't raised by a single person, a single face that stood out amongst the village and a half that brought her up. 

She can’t blame her father for being so destroyed. He couldn’t afford to take off of work in order to plan her mother’s funeral. He couldn’t afford to be late in the mornings, and he couldn’t afford not to stay late in the evenings in order to keep a roof over both of their heads. She stays up as late as she can just to see him come home. She can only manage to do so on the weekends, watching and waiting for his car’s headlights through the grimy window of the apartment. 

Whenever he stepped inside, he looked so bone-tired he could collapse. On the days when Sayaka stays up late enough to greet him, she makes him microwavable noodles, and watches as he eats them with a small smile. He always forces himself to stay awake long enough to brush her hair and talk with her about her day. He was a pleasant man. Tired and worn down. He spoke softly, thoughtfully, with a rasp to it. She’d loved him with all her heart. 

Those moments in the early morning with her father brushing her hair and speaking quietly with her so as not to wake the neighbors are some of the best memories she has. She recalls them fondly sometimes, though it does come with some level of hurt. Those moments were always so short. She’d always end up falling asleep, her tiny body not fit for the long hours her poor father worked. And then she’d wake up in her bed in the morning, and sob into an empty apartment. 

So, she doesn't have a mother and she barely has a father.

When she's old enough to walk and talk and eat and shit on her own, her father stops finding people to look after her. After she crosses the metaphorical hump of dependent childhood, she's left by herself. Her father has to take lower-paying jobs with longer hours because he can never keep them long enough to matter. She spends most of her childhood digging through the fridge trying to scrape together some kind of meal. It leaves her taste buds pretty dead, and her growth stunted. 

They’re not rich. They’re not even anywhere near the middle class. She spends some of her time with the other dirt poor kids in her seedy apartment building. They push her around a lot but they tell her what to avoid and how. They teach her to stay away from the people on floor three because one is a convicted rapist and the others are all mean and rude in one way or another. They tell her there’s a nice old woman on floor two that will let her sleep there if she gets too lonely because she doesn’t have anyone else and she likes to know that if she falls there’s someone there to dial an ambulance. They show her how to shoplift effectively and where the best places to dine and ditch are. They tell her about shows she’s never watched, and when she’s exhausted all the resources at home, they give her a hot meal. But most importantly, they teach her to trust her intuition and to go with her gut. 

One of them was nice to her, or as nice as rough children from an even rougher neighborhood could be. She can’t remember his name, but she remembers his face. He was plain-looking, with black hair cut choppy and uneven. He said his younger brother got happy with the safety scissors and cut it up while he was taking a nap. She laughed at it, and he smacked her on the arm, but he was laughing too so it didn’t hurt as bad as it should have. 

When her apartment runs out of food, he’s usually the one to offer for her to eat at his. His mother was always sweet and taught her how to cook for herself without having to reheat everything. It was so odd to her, and she wonders if her mother would have taught her how to cook like this if she had been alive. She wonders if she would have taught her anything at all, or if she’d be home enough to do so. Maybe if she had a mother who worked too, her dad could stay home with her more often. She voiced this once while eating some filling stir fry his mother made. His mother had laughed, and pet her head, and then said something about how her time costs money. She could only nod sagely and pretend to know what that meant. 

This boy lives only a floor above her, which means she can hear when things happen in his home. He lives at home with his mother and his little brother, but his mother is usually always home. Sayaka doesn’t quite understand why his parent could stay home all the time and hers couldn't. Whenever she asks about it, he gets all cagey and avoids the subject. But, she notices, whenever there are weird noises coming from upstairs, he’s always either outside or hanging out in her apartment. 

But one day, while he and his little brother are sitting on her couch, something bad happens. She remembers distinctly that they were playing a really worn out board game, one her mother really loved, Clue. She was always Mrs. Peacock, and he was always Colonel Mustard, and his little brother was always Professor Plum. A scream, and then a loud bang goes off in the apartment above them. And then, loud and stomping footsteps. She sits still, shocked and confused, while his little brother starts sobbing immediately from the scare. 

And all she can do is watch as he walks over to the phone in her apartment, dial the police, and say in a shaky voice, “Hello? I think my mother has been shot.” 

In an hour, Sayaka’s life is once again devoid of companionship. That kind boy and his brother are taken by the police. He had said before he left that he was going to his grandmother’s house, but Sayaka could tell that he was lying to her. She knows, much like with her own mother's case, they’ll never catch the man that did it. 

She had one friend, and then he was gone. 

As for the other kids, they’re not her friends by any stretch of the word, and they tend to avoid her at all costs. She goes to school, she stays as long as she can manage, but she always ends up at home and alone. It gets scary, sitting there as a child alone with thoughts of her mother’s murder, and then that boy’s mother’s murder. It’s times like those that she wonders what her mother’s funeral must have been like. Were her parents there? Did her mother grow up with parents that looked at her, that were breathing? Did her mother’s father stay as distant as hers did?

She stays up late with these thoughts swimming around in her head, clutching a heart-shaped photo frame.

On her sixth birthday, her father gives her a little television set. It's ugly and faded and doesn't always work, but it's hers and she loves it. She can finally watch the things her classmates watch. Well, not all the things her classmates watch, but certainly some! The thing she was always most excited about was the late-night reruns of music and interviews. She remembers mimicking the dances of the old and faded concerts. She remembers humming the tune of the Creamy Mami opening theme song on her way to school with her beat-up blue backpack covered in cartoon cats. 

Maybe that’s what started off her obsession with idols. Watching how Yu Morisawa transformed into someone completely different, someone glamorous and popular with plenty of people around her, and with some catchy tunes. It’s what drives her to study the actual idol performances much more closely, and copy the movements to perfection. She wants it to be perfect every time. She has a passion for it, and it burns bright in her chest. She wants to have people look at her. Not like creepy men on the train look at her. She wants people to look at her like she looked at those idols right at that moment. She wants to see the stars in people’s eyes, and she wants to feel important, like she made an impact. 

So, when she was eight years old, she finally gets her shot. 

It’s an open audition looking for new talent, and right away, Sayaka knows she sticks out like a sore thumb. She looks scruffy, though she did clean up as nicely as she could. But it’s not just that, it’s something else that hits a lot harder. 

All the other girls have parents. 

Even single parents are there, showing up to humor their kids dream of becoming famous. Some girls look like they’d rather be anywhere else, while their mothers hover dangerously close by with harsh words and even harsher glares. Some girls have an exasperated looking father near them, looking tired but happy and caring. And suddenly, like a gunshot, Sayaka feels like a hole was opening up in her stomach. It was like she was making the drop on a roller coaster (though she’s never gotten to ride one, and never would). 

She is the only child alone in the crowd. She realizes much, much later that had made her easy prey. An easy target, the odd one out of the bunch. No one there to protect her from leering gazes and fleeting touches left  _ everywhere _ . But at the time she’s eight and the only thing she wants to do is to sing and dance for people and see their faces light up. She just wants to make people happy. 

And that’s her first mistake. She wants so badly to make people happy, that she doesn’t know who the right people to make happy are. In her confusion, she settles on the talent scouts that tell her she’s gorgeous, her voice was beautiful, and that she had the makings of a real idol. She copies her father’s signature off of a school paper and signs the contract without thinking about it. She may as well have signed away her soul. 

Being an idol is a lot of hard work. Sayaka can’t stay after school anymore, she can’t hang around the apartment kids in the hopes that they’ll talk to her. She has a set schedule that she has to stick to, and she’s assigned a tutor from the talent agency to appease the schooling system. She has regular tests to make sure she’s keeping up to speed while also undertaking the role of idol. She always passes with flying colors. She has a beautiful mind, just like her mother. But it’s not about her mind anymore, it’s about her body and her face. 

She has to go to constant dance rehearsals. She has to take voice lessons. She likes the learning, it’s fun and while she sweats a lot, it gets her energy out in a productive way when previously all it did was atrophy in her lonely apartment all day. What she doesn’t like is how people in suits will come in and tell them all to work more, to dance more, to sing more and more and more. Those kids with parents who were normal, they’re smart and they exit out of their contracts. Not without a hefty fine of course, but they still make it out. Sayaka’s class gets smaller and smaller until its just her and two other girls with helicopter mothers. And then, after a month or two, it’s just her. 

She should have found a way out. 

She’s placed under constant surveillance. Her father is understandably worried, and tries to contact her through the agency as much as he can, but he isn’t home often enough to do much about her new living situation in the idol trainee dorms. And while she’s on the brink of near-starvation with the agency, at least she gets a steady food supply. At least she gets a room in the idol dorms that didn’t smell, or was too small, or had water damage and mold everywhere. She didn’t have to avoid floor three, but, then again, there were more people to sexually harass her than there ever had been at her apartment. 

And that’s the worst part of it all, the touching. They kept touching and touching and there were no breaks for her. She didn’t get breaks when it came to the dancing, to the singing, to the singing and dancing, and least of all the touching. She’s taught how to behave in interviews, and how to smile, and how to wear heels. She’s taught how to walk and speak, and how to curve her spine just right. She’s reprogrammed. The best analogy to it would be the military with how her entire identity was stripped, and all that was left was the raw passion. The one singular desire to just make people happy. To become an idol. 

She would do anything to achieve her dream. She’s not lying. She’d do  _ anything _ . 

And that’s what makes her into a vicious kind of person. The kind of girl filled with nothing but vitriol and ambition. She works harder than any of her other fellow idols, and she grows a reputation among them for being pretty hard to defeat. Not just in sheer ability, but in passion and drive as well. Her fellow idols complain about the terrible conditions they’re under, threaten to leave, some do, but most of them stay, and most of them learn to suffer in silence just as Sayaka does. 

The faces and the places and the times all blur together into one. It’s a haze of touching and dancing and endless singing lessons. But, once she gets past the first phase of being an idol trainee, the grooming portion, things begin to even out. It’s less scary going in for rehearsals and dances. But it really starts to become worth it when she’s debuting in her first idol group officially and begins to perform. 

Somehow, being on stage, and dancing for a live audience just added a whole new dimension to everything. It cleared her cloudy head in a way that nothing else could. She wasn’t the main focus, but she was a hard worker, she would do anything and everything to reach the goal she had set out to achieve. Besides, bathing herself in the rancorous sound and the cheering and the dancing and the sweltering stage lights injected a kind of violent clarity in her. It’s there on the stage of her first performance, some local gig for the prefecture, that she decides that no matter what happens she will keep at it. She wouldn’t let anything or anyone stand in her way, and she would do everything she had to do in order to keep her tight hold on her spot as an idol.

The end goal had never been to be the best idol in the world, to be the most popular, or even to be the Ultimate Idol. Merely to become an idol, and stay an idol. Her ambition, and her need to always be moving, required her to continue to advance. 

When she started on the road to becoming a famous idol, she became busy. She would go out for days, trying to outsource and become what she had dreamed of being. She would become an idol no matter what. Even if she got hurt a lot. Even if the way people stared at her made her itch under her skin. Even if it took away the little time she could spend with her father. She missed him. She really did. But she felt the bitterness overtake her every time she thought about it. She felt the resentment grow as she met new people, people who wouldn’t leave her alone for days. People who’d stay by her side, for better or for worse, and who would talk with her without passing out five minutes after.

She can’t, however, grow close to them. Trust is a liability in her profession. 

When the touches turned invasive, and the training got harsh, she hadn’t flinched. She didn’t bat an eye at the way things took a turn. In return they raised her to higher and higher positions. It had started with a commercial. It went on to a large idol group, mass producing stardom in cheap flavors, and she would stay there for a time, two years, until management changed. The faces were swapped, and the touches were harsher, the acts were harsher, the training was harsher, and she was quiet through it all. 

Suffering in silence was the biggest thing among them. She and her fellow idols never spoke about it in the dressing rooms. Those that were quiet about their experiences were the ones that got boosted. Those that would follow direction and complete their tasks as needed were the ones that got favored. 

They’d never talk about it as they stood outside the warehouse after another day of exhausting singing dancing and acting for yet another music video, all waiting for their respective rides. The scathing glances they’d send Sayaka as she was pulled aside by the directors and producers of music video after music video at the end of the night, knowing she would never have a ride waiting for her, felt almost like knives digging into her skin. She waited with the rest of the group anyways, until she would be pulled away for her to do favors. She hung around, like she did with the kids at the apartment, in the hopes that maybe someone will want to talk to her. 

She was always so lonely.

And then her managers change. Things change with it. 

Her old manager had always been coarse and demanding. He would never just hand things over to her, and she would never expect it of him. She was pushed farther and farther up in the groups, becoming lead singer, but never being satisfied with so many other faces right next to her, drowning out her sound. 

Her new manager was the same way. But he demanded more of her. The exercise, waist training, dieting, bingeing, purging, all of it was nothing compared to the strain he put her under to fill the specific role he had carefully crafted for her to present to the public. He stressed the importance of appearing innocent, but open to temptation, of becoming less of a person and more of a fantasy. He stressed the importance of sales. He stressed the importance of her  _ face _ .

Long before that she had lost her original face. She had lost the genuine smile of her youth. She had lost it at nine years old. She perfected it at age twelve, upon her manager’s insistence. She perfected it by force.

His stress on how she behaves with her fans, how she behaves in general, and controlling every facet of it, is what moves her swiftly. But it’s also the final nail in her proverbial coffin. She’s stuck in the life of an idol for good. She had been the leader of her past idol group, the main girl among a group of fifteen. None of them could really compare to her, none of them had the guts and the drive that it took to keep going. No one else had her mother’s ambition. 

And like that, she’s been moved into an idol group composing of other idol group leaders. The best of the best. Six of them. All previous leaders of their own respective groups.

They’re all the best of the best, and yet, only one has snatched up the title of the group leader. 

Hanna Hinami. 

To say that Sayaka is angry about it is an understatement. She worked so much harder than Hanna all the time. All Hanna did was flirt and scream, and push people around. She hadn’t been optimistic when she first met her, but the more Sayaka got to know her, the less she liked her. 

Hanna was loud, and obnoxious, and pushy. Hanna was bossy and had a superiority complex. Hanna sneered at all of Sayaka’s suggestions, and talked over her whenever she could. Hanna stole from their fellow idols, and made people upset on purpose. Hanna gave Satomi an indian burn on the first day that she met her. Hanna called Saya a cheap whore, which hurt not only Saya, but Teruyo as well. Hanna shoved Ayaka into a locker. Hanna and Sayaka did nothing but fight. 

Hanna was also gorgeous, had dark purple hair that cascaded down her back in curls, and a beauty mark just under her left eye. Hanna sang soprano just like the rest of them, but with the managers she spoke in a low sultry tone. Hanna was a veteran not only of the idol scene, but of the entertainment industry in general. Hanna had been a child actress. Hanna had grown up starring in commercials. Hanna had grown up wealthy. Hanna had grown up having everything served to her on a silver platter. 

And it makes Sayaka furious. 

Satomi Aoba grew up sheltered and soft in a loving home, easy to anger, which made her easy to pick on. She was an only child, and has the telltale ego of one as well. But she wasn’t privileged. 

Saya Mitsuo grew up in one of the roughest areas Sayaka had ever seen, which made her appreciative of the admittedly still quite bad situation they were all trapped in. She had quite a number of siblings she felt she had to provide for. 

Teruyo Matano grew up in a decent house with a decent family, she had siblings and wasn’t lonely all the time. Teruyo, out of their little group, had the most normal upbringing. She happened to have some kind of ambition, which led her here. 

Ayaka Haneyama, much like Satomi, was an only child, and carried the ego of one. Her parents were divorced, so she held that baggage as well, along with the kind of spoiled personality that came when two parents fought over one child’s affection. She became an idol because she wanted to be famous, and that was all the motivation Ayaka had needed. 

Sayaka had known these girls for years. They were the closest thing to friends she could possibly have in this kind of life. They had all been part of different idol groups, but they had mingled frequently with one another, as their shooting sets happened to coincide quite often due to being hired under the same company. They were familiar with one another, these girls were her most heated rivals, as well. They knew the ropes by now. 

The only newcomer they had here, was Hanna. 

Spoiled rotten Hanna, who during their first dance rehearsal, put broken glass in Sayaka’s shoes and acted like nothing happened, and that is must have been one of the other girls sabotaging her. Sayaka had limped for weeks after the incident, feet bloodied every time she had to shove her feet into her shoes and dance. But she refused to cave. She refused to let Hanna win. 

Awful, evil Hanna, who during their third dance rehearsal, an all day dance rehearsal that left all their legs bruised and sore and aching, kept going out of her way to step on Sayaka’s toes or twist her ankle or trip her up. 

The actions kept getting more violent, and continued to escalate.

As their group debut began to approach, Hanna got even worse. They both knew right from the start, that even if they were all in the same group, they were all equally competition. But Hanna had taken it to a different level. Yes, there was always violent sabotage in the idol world, it came with the territory, but Hanna’s attempts on her career and even sometimes her life were so blatant it was frustrating. Because the managers wouldn’t do a thing about it. 

So Sayaka had to make a decision. 

It’s almost frightening how easy the decision ends up being. 

At one of the company’s warehouses, there is a metal staircase leading out to a small lot of trailers. The trailers are mainly used for storage purposes, and for quick props because it sits right next to one of the main studios. However, it’s also incredibly isolated. There are no windows in any of the surrounding buildings, and the only real vantage point is from up on the roof of the warehouse, which is kept locked anyways so that they don’t have a repeat of a certain incident a few years back. Sayaka still shivers at the memory of the crumpled body of one of the tech people, overworked and underpaid and suffering from malnutrition, smeared across the parking lot from the fall. 

She’s grateful for that memory in the moments leading up to it all. 

After shooting, or really just preparing for the shoot as they were doing now, Hanna will usually go out to the lot of trailers to drink all the tiny bottles of various substances she keeps in her purse. Sayaka knows the concoction is what makes her that much more irritable. It’s not what makes her violent, it’s not what drove her to attack her constantly, but it is what exacerbated her moods. 

It’s a predictable confrontation. Hanna likes to be alone, likes to have herself set apart from the group as a whole. Sayaka can somewhat understand this mentality. Wanting to stand out apart from the crowd was something everyone as an idol strived for. But Hanna was not a team player. Sayaka has to wonder why she was even here, if all she wanted was to be an island unto herself. 

But that’s another difference between her and Hanna. Hanna had ambition, yes, almost as much ambition as her. Hanna had different looks but was no less gorgeous than her. Hanna had the drive and the power to become an idol. 

When it got down to the nitty gritty, Hanna had parents. Hanna had people who would miss her. Hanna had a mother who picked her up after shooting and wrapped an arm around her and spoke with her about what horrors the entertainment industry would bring. Hanna had a wealthy father with enough money to be certain that Hanna would never have to go hungry. Hanna had parents that could stay home with her, and hold her throughout the head and the heart aches. 

So when Hanna stands up, staring at her with a sneer and a vicious tongue, her heels making loud noises against the rusted metal staircase, Sayaka feels so bitter. If all her hard work, all her lonesome lonely hard work, was nothing when compared to a rich girl with loving parents, then what was the point of it all? 

What was the point in playing as fair as she could, when Hanna was clearly prepared for the blitz? 

Sayaka’s face is calm and serene as Hanna is shouting in her face. It doesn’t feel like she’s really in her body in that moment, as if she’s someplace else and watching some other person pilot her as if she were a puppet. She doesn’t feel the way that her hands raise, slowly, steadily. She doesn’t hear the sharp inhale of panic that Hanna takes, eyes widening in horror. She doesn’t see her pale and shaking hands push her with such force Hanna is sent tumbling violently into the metal staircase below.

And she certainly doesn’t hear the way Hanna’s body slams against the cold metal again and again and again. 

Clang. 

Clang. 

Clang. 

_ Clang _ **.**

There’s a separate sharp inhale of breath behind her, and Sayaka turns to see Teruyo staring at her in absolute terror. There’s a quiver in her lip, and tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. She’s holding a water bottle, and her eyes travel in between where Sayaka stands at the top of the stairs, and where Hanna lays sobbing and twitching at the bottom. 

Sayaka raises a finger to her lips, an indicator to keep quiet. 

“Hinami-san had a nasty fall. She clearly had something too heavy in her system. Right, Matano-san?” Sayaka’s lips move, but it doesn’t feel like her own voice is the one speaking. It feels distant, far away. 

Teruyo glances down at Hanna, who’s stopped moving by now, and at the hot pink still clinging to the cold steel that stands out like a wound against the landscape. She nods, jerkily, anxiously. Sayaka turns way from her, to stare back down at Hanna. She doesn’t flinch when Teruyo slams herself up against the side of the platform at the top, and retches onto the pavement below. 

It’s a simple good story. That Hanna had been using certain things that made her fall. Sayaka doesn’t want to admit that she had plotted it out to be that way. She knew that her company wouldn’t risk even a little bit of their plans being leaked, and didn’t invest in surveillance cameras. She knew that Hanna had a problem. She knew that Hanna liked that spot because no one else really went there lest they suffer her wrath. She knew that her company would want to keep things under wraps and not cause a scandal under the guise of protecting her family. 

Hanna hadn’t died immediately. She had laid there in pain for quite some time. She had been twitching and sobbing and shaking. She had been so afraid, so filled with fear. After Teruyo had gone back inside, shouting for someone to call an ambulance, Sayaka had heard her cries. She’d heard the way Hanna had called out for her mother, anyone, to help her. 

And what’s worse is that she can’t seem to feel anything about it in response. 

Out of their group, only she and Teruyo don’t attend Hanna’s funeral. No one else but them know about what really happened behind the warehouse. They sit together in the lounge room of their dorms. Teruyo stares at her warily, as if seeing her for the first time. It’s a strange feeling, having someone take her so seriously for the first time. They don’t talk for a long while, it goes on for weeks. 

Teruyo changes after that. She’s more wary, more anxious, less motivated to challenge Sayaka when there’s a clear disagreement between them. She grows even more protective of Saya. Sayaka barely gets to interact with the two of them outside of mandatory group rehearsal before Teruyo is rushing them away, a shudder in her every step. Saya, for all her simplicity, merely seems confused about it all, but it’s clear that she trusts Teruyo far more than she could ever trust Sayaka. 

And Sayaka wishes she could feel like that with anybody. She wishes that she had someone to cling to like Teruyo does to Saya. Like Saya likewise does to Teruyo. Satomi and Ayaka were even closer to one another than Sayaka was with anybody in the group. And perhaps that’s what made her easy prey to the managers. Perhaps that’s what gave her her edge. 

Perhaps being lonely was what made her successful. 

But it felt so awful. 

The guilt eats away at her for months. The debut creeps closer and closer on her. And even if she got what she wanted, even if she got the main girl position, and no longer had someone beating up on her at every opportunity, it felt hollow. It felt empty. It felt like even if she did manage to complete the task, she’d never be free of Hanna Hinami. 

But then the debut begins, and she can’t think about anything other than what her managers push for her to think of. 

She has to keep her face in a perfect expression. She can’t allow herself to be ugly. She can’t allow herself to slip up. She must keep perfect posture in interviews. She must maintain eye contact. She must keep her voice properly trained and be ready to sing and dance at a moment’s notice. She must memorize her dance routines until she can perform them in her sleep. She can’t allow herself to think about Hanna Hinami and the way her skull cracked so brutally in front of her. 

She has an interview to have, on an uncomfortable and famous bright red couch. 

  
  
  


The T.V. static fades, and Sayaka is once again revealed, sitting prim and proper on her chair, laughing politely as the host continues on about her illustrious career. It’s so fake. It all feels so so fake and empty and tasteless. 

“So, Maizono, there have been rumors going around that originally your group was supposed to be made of six members, making the number even. Is that true?” 

She freezes in place, a deer in the headlights. 

“Well- I’m not sure how much I’m really allowed to say about that-” 

“But there was an injury on your set, right? Hanna Hinami, quite famous herself, passed away tragically after an accident there. Is it possible that she was meant to be your sixth member?” 

“S-sir, I really can’t talk about this-” Sayaka attempts to avoid the subject. Her carefully put together mask is falling apart. No longer is she a famous idol. She’s a girl about to enter middleschool who just committed murder not too long ago. She’s terrified, she’s shocked and she feels nothing but guilt eating away at her insides, burning her up, boiling and bursting up her throat in sizzling bile. 

“Maizono? Is something wrong?” 

Sayaka feels like she’s underwater, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. She takes her microphone off, movements jerky and uncoordinated. 

“I’m sorry, I have to go.” 

And she takes off. 

The T.V. goes to black. 

  
  
  


After spending fifteen minutes in the green room trying to calm down, her manager, her new manager, not her old manager, burst in looking absolutely furious. She’s seen him angry before. He’s prone to shouting at both her and her fellow idols if they’re not up to par. He was always controlling and degrading, always loud and pushy and put his hands where hands should never be. 

But right now he is absolutely alight with a rage she’s never seen before, and it makes her flinch backwards from him. 

“What the fuck was that, huh?!”

The tech people in the room, those who are not associated with the company she’s under, look on with judgement. She glances at them pleadingly, searchingly, beggingly. This was all too much at once. This was all so much and she didn’t know what to do. Someone please help her, someone please save her-

They all look away, and swiftly exit the room. 

All Sayaka can do is let out a choked yelp, as her manager grabs her by her hair, and drags her out towards his limousine parked in the back. She stumbles on the way, feet sluggish as her heels catch on the staircase, making her fall forward. Her manager does nothing but tug harder on her hair, a vice grip unrivaled by the way she fumbles after him. 

For a split second, she’s almost certain she sees Teruyo staring at her. 

All too quickly, both her and her manager are in his limousine. He’s shouting at the driver to roll up the partition, and to get a move on, and to start driving in circles around the city until he says that she can go back to the idols dorm. Her whole body shakes, and she tries to scramble into a corner, tries to make herself small, tries to get away. He was always so rough. 

He catches her by her ankle and pulls her back. 

“Listen, I don’t know what the hell you were thinking when you pulled that shitstorm of a stunt on the air, but we’re gonna fix it. We’re gonna make sure that pretty little face of yours can’t show anything else but your best foot forward.”

She watches, a captive, as he takes out a packet of cigarettes, and sets one alight. He takes a deep inhale. She thinks she can understand now why princesses in all those western stories could never save themselves from their dragon captors. It was because a fear like this was so immobilizing. 

He puts one hand over her mouth, pushes her up against the seat, and stubs the cigarette out on her thigh. 

The pain is like nothing she’s felt before. It’s not like the burn in her legs after an all day dance rehearsal. It’s not like the soreness of her throat after she sings too hard and loses her voice. It’s not like the way some men would smack her or hit her or close their hands around her neck just to see if she’d like it or not. She never liked it, but if they really wanted her to, she could pretend. It’s easy to distance herself from her body when sex was a bargaining chip and not something to keep sacred. 

But this wasn’t sex. This wasn’t something she could pull away from. He was staring dead into her eyes and expecting her to pay attention. She had to be emotionally present for this experience. It was the worst form of torture. It was a pain she couldn’t possibly run away from. She couldn’t tuck herself away into a corner of her mind and let herself run on autopilot, she couldn’t rely on her gut feelings or her intuition and she couldn’t call for help because no one would be there to save her. 

After she stops screaming, eyes squeezing shut and bidding unshed tears not to fall, please don’t fall, please don’t let him know that there is a weakness here. Don’t let him see that weakness. 

The tears fall anyway, and she’s met with a smack, and a frown. 

“We’re going to be here for as long as it takes. Til’ no matter what happens, you keep up that face that we worked so hard on.” Her manager speaks again, holding up the pack of cigarettes and shaking it slightly. 

She’s stuck in that car for hours. 

After a while, she stops screaming. 

Halfway through the pack, her legs start to feel numb. 

Two-thirds of the way through the pack, her tears dry up where they sit in her eye pits. 

On the second to last cigarette, he digs it into her thigh, stares at her in the face, and smirks. She doesn’t know what her face looks like in that moment, but she assumes it’s what he was looking for. A pleasant easy little smile. 

And then the touching starts up all over again.

He finally gets what he wanted out of her. 

“To make up for that shit, you’re going to do a photo shoot. I know you hate doing ‘em, but they rack in a lot of cash. People like looking at you, doll. Supply and demand.” 

She just nods. 

The limousine finally pulls up to the idol dorms. It’s early in the morning, and the sun has yet to rise. She walks numbly up the steps, hair, and clothing disheveled. She turns around and watches as the limousine pulls away, driving off to her manager's penthouse some blocks away. She watches as it rounds the corner. 

And she turns back around, keeping her head down. 

She lets her hair hide her face as she scans her I.D. to let herself into the building. She walks in, clutching herself tightly, and walks up to the stairs to the dorms. Teruyo and Saya look up at her from where they sit on the couches in the lounge sipping coffee and conversing softly with one another, confused mostly, until a look of understanding cross between them. It was a familiar kind of horror. 

They don’t help her. They turn their gaze away and give her some privacy. On the one hand, she’s grateful. Tonight had been humiliating enough. But on the other, she just wants someone, anyone, to ask if she’s alright. She wants someone to swoop in and tell her that someday all this suffering will be worth it. She wants so badly to feel comforted by anyone. 

She walks to her dorm, shuffling on her feet quietly. 

She can hear Ayaka snoring through her door. She can hear Satomi playing soft music and the tapping of her feet as she walks through their dance routines. She can hear the soft whispers of Teruyo and Saya back in the lounge. But most of all she can hear the soft thumping of her heels on the hardwood floor, and how unnaturally steady her heart beats in her chest. 

She slips into her dorm room and shucks off her clothes as if they burned. They might be burning tomorrow. She might just use the one day off they’ve gotten in such a long time to set them alight. But then that reminds her of the sizzle of the first cigarette on her skin, and all she ends up doing is throwing them away. 

Once she steps into the bathroom, it’s pink walls seeming to mock her, she finally has the chance to look at her face, and what’s been done to it. It’s not a pretty sight. 

Well, perhaps it is a pretty sight. Her face is stuck in the most serene expression she’s ever seen on her face. A soft smile, a pale blush, a neutral expression sure to charm anyone with just how sweet she looked. And there, in front of the mirror is where she’s finally able to break down. 

Her fist draws back quick, and slams itself into the mirror. One punch and the glass spiders outward from the center. One more punch and it shatters altogether, shards of silvery reflections raining down in one fell swoop. She can only distantly feel the way blood trickles down her fist to the floor, and the way her mouth opens up in a sorrowful wail. 

She screams, loud and angry and enraged, and tears up her room in the process. She kicks holes in the walls, she rips the drapes down and flips her mattress off of the frame. She rips pillows open. She guts everything she can get her hands on. The sun rises through her window, and her exhaustion is more than she can explain. 

Was this how her mother always felt? 

Was this how her mother had felt when she was murdered? 

She doesn’t know. She can’t know. 

The thought eats away at her, just as it did when she was younger. 

She climbs into the shower, and washes away the traces of the night before. Down the drain go the dried salt tracks of her tears. Down the drain goes the sweat, the blood, the unmentionable fluids. She stays there under the spray until it’s all washed away, and the searing scorching heat of the water finally runs dry, and she’s left shivering under a cold spray. She stays there for as long as she can, staring blankly ahead of her as if perhaps she could stay there, the world outside would go away. 

When she finally gets dressed, and exits her room, the only sounds come from the dorm lounge. Ayaka and Satomi are speaking with one another, playing another round of Ultimate Rock Paper Scissors and laughing too loud. Teruyo and Saya are there too, but they just stand off to the side and look nervous. 

They all avoid her gaze when she walks by. 

It’s her day off, and although she’s so exhausted and there’s a tremble in her legs when she walks, she has to escape. For just one day, she has to leave and get out and find someplace to hole up in. Just for one day. Just for a few measly hours. 

As she steps out onto the concrete in front of the idol dorm building, she realizes she doesn’t have anywhere else to go. There’s only one shelter left available to her. Anywhere else and she’d just be lost. And there would be no guarantee that she’d be alone with her thoughts. 

So, home it was. 

The train ride there is thankfully uneventful. She keeps her face covered by her hair, and makes herself as small as possible. It helps some. She still gets odd stares from creepy men on the train, but it almost feels nostalgic now. Oh if they only knew. Her knees knock together when the train screeches to a halt, and she stands, a bit wobbly, making her exit. 

The walk back to her old apartment feels both familiar and foreign. The streets are the same, just more cracked and faded now. The kids all looked different here, but they acted the same: rough and tough and uncaring. She brushes past them easily now, and doesn’t linger by their side, waiting anxiously for their attention. 

Her hand lingers on the grimy door to the apartment building, will flickering much like the faded yellow light of the bald light bulb in the dim lobby. She eventually pushes herself to walk in. She looks too expensive to be here now, but she feels just about the same. It’s older now, heavier with age. The tile floor has more chips in it, and the walls have even more water damage. 

It feels like home. 

She climbs up the steps. Slowly past floor two, where that old woman had long since died. Past floor three, where the mean people used to live, but now don’t even have a passing thought here. She finally makes it to her floor. Her eyes linger up the stairs, where her friend used to live. She has the context now, for what it all meant. 

She walks into her hallway, down the thick carpeting to her door. She still knows where the spare key is kept, tucked behind a loose baseboard at the bottom of the wall so that when she was younger she could reach it. The door opens with a click, and the sight that she’s met with fills her with a feeling she still doesn’t know how to explain. 

Her father is asleep on the couch, curled up tight and shivering like a leaf. The apartment is a little bit messier now, most likely because she was never home to clean things up now. But it’s still the same as always. Just different. Different, yet the exact same. 

She sits down at the kitchen table, and her hands reach out. They’re bigger now, softer, stronger. She doesn’t have the same calluses that her mother had, but she does have strong hands. And that’s something she’s grateful for. Her hands clasp tightly onto the heart-shaped frame still sitting on the table, her mother’s smiling face looking up at her with the same expression it always had. 

“Sayaka…?” A rough voice sounds out. It hasn’t changed much. It’s raspier now, but she supposes that came with the sleep still on the edge of his voice. 

“Hi Dad.” Her voice is even, but quiet. She doesn’t know how to talk to him after so long. 

“Sayaka… Are you okay?” 

And the dam breaks. 

She clutches the heart-shaped frame tightly, her fingers shaking. Silent tears roll down her face once more, empty and hollow and desperate. She got what she wanted, didn’t she? Someone asking if she was okay? And now she can’t even answer such a simple question. 

“Could you tell me what she was like again? Please?” It’s not lost on her the way her voice wavers, and she knows it’s not lost on him. 

Her father sits down across from her, his own worn and weathered hands settling over top of her own. His thumbs rub circles into her joints, and his voice is soft. It’s still raspy, and tinged with an exhaustion that creeps into every facet of who he was. It washed him out, made him paler, thinner. His hands are warm and hold fast on to her. She still hides her face from him, and hopes to whatever god is listening that the sickening smile wasn’t on her face anymore. 

And just like it had been back then, he moves his chair to sit next to hers, and brushes her still tangled hair. 

“Her name was Sadashi. And she was wonderful. She was beautiful and gorgeous and held herself so high. She had an amazing mind. She was smarter than almost everyone I knew. She could figure you out at a moment’s notice, and she wasn’t sorry about it either. She could make the big things feel small and the small things seem big. She had a lovely voice, but absolutely no talent for music. She couldn’t sing to save her life. She loved to watch me play guitar. We went to the beach as often as we could, and she’d laugh when the seagulls stole our food-” 

She falls asleep to the lullaby of an old childhood story. The lost tale of Sadashi Maizono, loving wife and mother. She allows herself rest in this foreign and familiar space, cradling her head against the table that still had all the old grooves in it, plus quite a few more. She allows herself to finally, finally, rest. 

And when she wakes up, her father is gone. 

She looks everywhere around the apartment for him, but he’s nowhere to be found. She nearly panics until she remembers that this was exactly what had happened her entire life. This was what would continue throughout her entire life. This would never end, this would never change. He would always be there for only a short time, and then he would leave her again like always. 

He was at work then. 

She feels a bitterness so strong it nearly knocks her out. 

She takes the heart-shaped frame, and it’s photo. She takes the album containing the pictures kept on their dates throughout the years. She takes only one wedding photo out of it’s entire album. It’s the one she thinks shows the most personality. It’s one where her mother is shoving her father’s face into his piece of cake, and she is ugly laughing about it. It’s a sacred photo. It’s something she adds to the very last page of the album she steals. 

And then she leaves again. 

Back to the endless grind of idol life, and back to a newly cleaned dorm room. 

She doesn’t ask who called in the cleanup crew, but she has a sneaking suspicion that it’s Teruyo. 

They don’t talk about it. 

  
  
  


Weeks later, she’s entering middle school again. The only people she seems to hear about are herself, and a boy named Makoto Naegi. Apparently, he had such terrible luck. 

They never talk, their social circles are far too different for them to even cross paths, but they know of each other. Sayaka sees him sometimes, outside of her classroom window, as he runs with the other students in his class for physical education. He seems soft, and kind, and it sort of makes her want to punch him in the face. 

She, herself, has a bit of a reputation behind her. 

Acclimating back to a school environment after being under such intense competition is hard for her. She’s too ambitious, too competitive, too pushy. People idolize her anyways, and she supposes that was what her job always was. It’s too much effort to try and fix an already started rumor, so she gets used to letting people believe what they want to, and merely continuing the act already burned into her. 

It’s hard to break the habit of pretending to be someone you’re not. 

So, when she watches stupid sweet little Makoto Naegi lead a crane that had wandered onto school grounds back out into the forest, it makes her furious. 

It makes no sense to her, why it makes her this mad. Perhaps she envies the crane. Perhaps she wants to be led back to the woods. Perhaps she just hates the thought of so much care being placed into an animal that would surely die soon anyways. If it was dumb enough to wander onto their school grounds, it was dumb enough to wander into traffic. 

She skips the rest of the school day and spends it curled up in the girls bathroom. 

When the school day ends, she’s back to being an idol. 

When middle school ends, she’s invited to Hopes Peak Academy. 

She has to admit, the whole thing is rather impressive. 

Sayaka had known going into this, from the very beginning, that there would be a lot of glamour involved. That was nothing new for her, she’d been in her industry since she was old enough to want it (too young in her opinion now, but she’s getting ahead of herself). She hadn’t been expecting the letter with the ornate wax seal upon it, nor was she expecting the influx of publicity from that simple letter she had received over the past couple of days, but, like her manager always insisted, there was no such thing as bad press. 

“Such high ceilings,” She says in a voice soft as silk, lilting and bemused in a way that’s been practiced repeatedly, her eyes wandering over the high arches of the main entrance. It’s too practiced, too manufactured, and much too plastic. “The echo in here must be deafening. I wonder how loud it will be during the opening ceremony. Unless we’re holding that outside?” 

“I’m not exactly sure what the procedure will be, but-” Their personal tour guide begins speaking, and she stands in rapt attention. There’s a reason she wanted a tour, and there’s a reason she needed to have someone explain things to her. She is a celebrity after all, and as warm and welcoming she is certain she will be to her fellow classmates, she dreads being swarmed. 

Unfortunately, her poor guide’s statements don’t get to make their way to completion as her manager cuts them apart sharply, “Don’t bother. You’ll be on a stage in Moscow by the time the rest of these kids will be settling in for algebra. Let’s keep this moving.” 

“Right. Of course.” She states, a soft smile still pressed firmly on her face. She keeps her voice even, although her nails dig bloody crescent moons into her palms and her manager glares at the back of her head, “Is there a music room? I think that’s the place I’d most like to spend my time when I am here.” 

“Of course!” Her guide exclaimed jubilantly, content to go off on explaining things as they make their way up the stairs and towards the music room. 

Despite her manager’s gruff attitude and inability to cooperate, her first visit to Hope’s Peak is a joyous occasion. She can’t wait to see if this school will be any different, can’t wait to see if anything at all will be different. She wants to believe it will all be different. 

She’s not holding her breath though. 

  
  


Makoto Naegi, crane boy, seems to have followed her to high school as well. 

She avoids him at first, content to keep herself distant. After all, she wouldn’t be at the school itself very often. When he does talk to her though, she’s quick to realize that all of the rumors about him were true. 

He was terribly sweet. He had no real backbone just yet. He was smitten with the idea of talking to a celebrity. He was completely and utterly normal and useless to her in every way possible. And she wanted to be friends with him, because he was just that helplessly kind in a way that made her want to punch his lights out.

But she keeps a healthy distance. 

She doesn’t have an opinion on what talent means. Her talent was nothing but hard work and the willingness to submit herself to horror show after horror show. If someone had told her that she had been born with her talent, she would be utterly insulted at them for spitting in the face of all her hard work and effort. But everyone at Hopes Peak seems to think talent is some kind of be-all end-all. 

It makes her so confused. When did the world shift like this? She can’t remember things being this way when she was young. This was something a girl of her nature, from absolute nothing with no expectations put on her to be anything greater that what she was, a pretty face, just couldn’t understand. 

But she pays attention, and she takes notice of all the little details. All the little maggots wriggling around like sticky pearls in the system, clutched tightly onto the subject and sucking the flesh off bloody. It’s no surprise to her when the reserve course students, who’d previously shambled around like zombies, finally snap. She isn’t surprised when things take a turn. 

She can almost sympathize with them. Who wouldn’t want to feel like the center of the universe? How can she blame them for doing anything it took to be recognized for their efforts, when she had done the exact same thing to achieve her talent? She’s mainly disappointed in her fellow main course classmates, the ones who look down on them. If she had been there, out in that crowd, they’d be looking down on her too. She could have been one of them, a disillusioned young girl desperate for greatness, desperate to be anything but a failure, and angry at the world for robbing them all of that. 

She and her classmates are locked up to protect them from the outside world, and it begins to make her antsy. She hated close quarters, she hated crowding, and she certainly hated having to see Makato “Bleeding Heart” Naegi every day of her life. Not because he annoyed her, not because he was anywhere near bad company, but because it made her feel so grossly inadequate. 

She avoids the kind people, because she doesn’t deserve their presence. They’re soft on her, gentle, understanding. They treat her decently and they like the person she presents to them. It’s so difficult to talk with them, because all she wants to do is shake them and scream and tell them to stay away from her, she is a walking hazard symbol, she is anger and terror and ambition and nothing else and no one should care for a terrible person like that. 

Compassion opened up the door for terrible memories. When everyone treated her warmly, kindly, with open arms and soft words, it was terrible. It made her want to reach out to them, to indulge herself in the creature comforts that only a conversation could present. But if she were to reach out, if she dared try to show that ugly side of her, she’d surely be rejected. During their captivity, she tests the water out a few times, talks to a select few, the softer ones like Fujisaki and Naegi and even Kirigiri. The only thing that it accomplishes is an even deeper burial of who she really is. 

It’s hard, talking to the nice ones. They don’t really understand where she’s coming from.

She ends up hanging around Enoshima and her sister most of the time. They’re both unsettling, and Enoshima is far too observant for her liking, but they share some common ground. Namely, being famous, and being terrible people. Enoshima doesn’t have any lingering guilt. Ikusaba pretends that she doesn’t, but it’s clear when they are apart that she’s lost and without a life raft, and Enoshima is just the ship that she’s going down with. 

She’s even less surprised when Enoshima has Ikusaba round them all up. 

And then all the memories of their time together are gone under the scalpel. 

And she is once again back where she first started after middle school ended. 

Angry, and bitter, and hurt. 

But good at hiding it. 


End file.
